Fiber optic technology was, at its inception in the late 1960's, faced with the challenge of penetrating the electronics marketplace. When optical fiber loss was dramatically reduced to less than 1 db/Km in the late 1970's, the opportunity to begin to replace costly copper transmission lines with a single optical fiber emerged. Transmission of many telephone calls over long unrepeated distances could ultimately lead to significant reduction in a system's cost per channel-mile. Because telecommunication systems costs are driven largely by cable cost, the fiber solution could be implemented without regard to the cost of the electro-optic interfaces, installation and repair. A major consequence of this situation is the very high cost of manufacturing these interfaces, installation and repair equipment, even today.
The introduction of fiber optic communications into computer and other electronic systems has lagged far behind the usage fiber optics have seen in the telecommunications industries. This should not be surprising, since the cost-per channel mile figure of merit which originally drove fiber optics is not as important in the computer and electronic industry. Instead, computer and other electronic systems designs are driven by the need to produce low cost, high performance information processing systems, and installation and repair equipment. Hardware-related issues are mostly packaging and interconnect related. While these issues have always held high priority for computer and electronic equipment manufacturers, only recently have they taken a slightly different flavor. With the speed of microprocessors now rapidly being pushed into and beyond the 100 Mb/s region, it is becoming very difficult to separate the circuit design-fabrication issues from the packaging-interconnect issues. Instead, packages and their interconnections are an inseparable part of circuits.
Many methods have been developed for joining, or splicing, optical fibers for installation and repair. Also, many different types of apparatus are available for performing the splicing operations. Generally, the splicing methods are complicated and expensive and are not readily adaptable for use in the field. Most of the prior art apparatus is also very complicated and expensive to use. Further, most of the prior art devices for splicing fiber optics are relatively large and unwieldily to use in the field. These devices traditionally are not adaptable for use with other optical fiber splicing techniques.
Accordingly, it is a purpose of the present invention to provide a new and improved method of splicing optical fibers.
It is a further purpose of the present invention to provide a new and improved method of splicing optical fibers which is relatively simple and inexpensive to perform.
It is a still further purpose of the present invention to provide a new and improved method of splicing optical fibers which can conveniently be performed in the field without the need for burdensome and expensive equipment.
It is another purpose of the present invention to provide new and improved apparatus for use in splicing optical fibers.
It is still another purpose of the present invention to provide new and improved apparatus for use in splicing optical fibers which is simple and inexpensive to fabricate and to use.